Vitalik Buterin Proposes New Standard For Ethereum Wallets
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Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed a new standard for Ethereum wallets in a Dec. 3 blog post.
According to Buterin, researchers and developers often overlook wallets, a major component of the Ethereum architecture. He argues that wallets are the bridge between users and the ecosystem, and users can only experience the ecosystem's benefits, such as decentralization, security, and privacy, to the extent that the wallet possesses those qualities.
“Recently, we have seen a lot of progress on improving user experience, security and functionality of Ethereum wallets,” Buterin wrote. “The goal of this post is to give my own views of some of the properties that an ideal Ethereum wallet would have.”
Vitalik has publicly advocated for better user experience in the Ethereum ecosystem, most recently during a Devcon panel discussion on the need for a “Unified Ethereum.” A wallet which makes transacting across the Ethereum ecosystem more seamless is key in this goal.
The Ideal Wallet
Buterin spoke to several major players in the Ethereum ecosystem for feedback on what the ideal wallet would look like, including Liraz Siri, a partner at the Ethereum Ecosystem Fund, and Yoav Weiss, a Security Fellow at the Ethereum Foundation.
Buterin proposes several core ideas for areas including cross-Layer 2 transactions, account security, privacy, and overall wallet security. The Ethereum founder mainly focused on security and privacy rather than user experience, as he said deploying and iterating based on feedback are more effective models for improving UX.
According to Buterin, wallets can improve the user experience in the Ethereum ecosystem by adopting chain-specific addresses and built-in send functionality which would allow users to seamlessly send and receive tokens across Ethereum Layer 2s. These features would abstract away most of the transaction process.
Furthermore, he proposes a two-sided security model to protect users from external and internal risks, emphasizing that a good wallet should be able to protect users from hacks and against their own mistakes. Vitalik’s solution is to embed user accounts with two keys, one for low-level operations and the other for high-value operations.
He also proposes a new approach to privacy on Ethereum. Vitalik suggests wallets adopt privacy balances and pools, storing a portion of users' funds and taking from those pools if a user initiates a transfer.
The wallet could generate stealth addresses if the user needs to receive funds. This way, a user’s activity would be harder to track and wouldn’t be directly linked to the applications they interact with.
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